Parul, p.2
Parul, page 2
1. Chaitra
It is the month of Chaitra
when perfumed southern winds
intoxicate love sick bees
and mango blossoms sway
as Kama comes riding on his parrot
and inflicts hapless maidens
with his arrows
the sap in the kadamba tree
brings memories of the flute of Krishna
and the parjataka sings a melody
in raga Vasanta.
It is a time when lovers redeem their
pledge of undying love through
amorous glances.
This is not a time
when you should leave me
as even sandalwood paste
will not cool my fire of viraha.
Chaitra brought in the new year with the rites of spring. The earth trembled in the inviting light of the sun; the sap in the trees was vibrant and brought the leaves to life as they acquired a deeper shade of green; the flowers seemed to intoxicate the bees with their fragrance; colours were more evocative; kokilas seemed to sing raga Vasant; winds carried lovers’ whispers and Jayadeva’s ashtapadi, lalita lavanga parihase, seemed to resonate in perfumed bowers. Chaitra was a month for devotees of Rama and Hanuman and the beginning of the new year of the Shaka almanac. Chaitra was a month when romance surged through Parul and she felt like Radha in search of Krishna. It was a month when she wondered if she might have been Radha in a previous life and whether Praful was Krishna.
After that brief meeting with Praful at a party, the two had talked often, and from the intimacy of their conversations, it seemed to them as if they had known each other for a long time, perhaps even from a previous birth. They felt drawn to each other; there was an unexplained bond of friendship between them even after the first coming together. It was as if they had met only to fulfil half remembered promises from the hoary past; it was not an accident but destiny that had brought them together one more time; it was as if an ancient unfinished Puranic love story was being enacted again but in human terms, and none other than Kama had brought them together even without discharging his flower arrow. It was if the narrative of their life was being played out in trikal, the three phases of time – past, present and future. Their relationship grew like the phases of the moon and they found it difficult to be away from each other. It was then that they decided that they would meet once a month at Parul’s home, on a full moon night. Steeped as he was in Sanskrit literature, he suggested that their first meeting be in Chaitra, which was only a couple of weeks away, for Chaitra was a month that celebrated human love. It is also a month when flowers bloom; nature that hibernates in the winter comes to life again; when the sap in trees begins to flow; when bees hover over fragrant flowers and the earth trembles with a renewed rhythm. Jayadeva, he said, begins his Gita Govinda in the spring and Harsha’s Ratnavali brings lovers together during the romantic spring festival, vasantotsava. He wanted his first meeting with Parul to be a pranay utsava, a festival of love, and what better month than Chaitra for this to happen?
It was the morning of the purnima of Chaitra. Parul’s hand shook when she applied her morning bindi after her bath. Her bindi would always be black. Even on her wedding day she had made a decorative bindi in black and not in the traditional red. She was nineteen then. While getting ready in the morning, she would often think of her mother’s large red bindi and her round and beautiful face. Parul had a special affinity for red. To her it stood for love and romance, passionate moments of belonging, and the joy and abandon of Holi. It reminded her of the hyacinth flowers that grew in her back yard in Indore and of the puja platter that she and her mother would take to the Mahalaxmi temple on Diwali day; the red Patola Gujarati girls would wear on their wedding day and of the red odhni her mother asked her to wear when she came of age. She was only thirteen then. Even at that age she read romantic stories and dreamed of love, although she did not quite understand what love really was and whether or not she would experience real love. She was determined that, when she found her perfect love she would wear a large red bindi like that of her mother. Although that day was not here yet, she dreamt of it.
To Parul, adornment was important, whether it was of herself or her home. As soon as she awoke in the morning, she would wash the threshold of her home and make a fresh rangoli everyday, sometimes with flowers, at other times with rice paste and on festive days, with white and red powder. She would draw the keri and swastika, a creeper and the kalpavriksha, but no matter what motif or material she used for the rangoli, she would invariably make a red bindu with kumkum somewhere in the middle of the rangoli. This was her expression of everything she considered, mangalmaya, good, pure and auspicious. The red bindu was her symbol of ultimate purity and perfection. She was not a very religious person, in a certain limited sense of the term; she was probably not even a Hindu for the piously pedantic, but in her own earthy way, there was room in her for the beautiful and the sacred. This for her was her Hindu spirit, and she considered herself no less a Hindu than those who flaunted their piety through ostentatious pujas, paths and kirtans, which for her were merely social gatherings. Her Hindu identity was experienced and expressed through the representation and the experience of the beautiful.
After her bath, she would sit in front of her dresser, look at herself in a mirror and adorn herself. On her dresser, there were bottles of unguents and colours, little brushes and cotton swabs, as well as a box of earrings. All her necklaces hung on a wall across from the dresser. This was very important to her as adornment and love for her were inseparable; to adorn was to get ready for her beloved and to love was an adornment of her mind. Mirrors were essential for Parul in her adornment. As she prepared herself for the romantic rendezvous, Parul adorned herself with great excitement and expectation. It was to be a happy moment for her, as the various adornments would enhance her innate beauty and bring to life her tender emotions of love and romance.
We in India adorn with a passion but all our adornments have a purpose, a dedication, a meaning, whether it is in our homes or on our bodies, our havelis or temples. Adornment in and through our arts is a metaphor and equally a visual prayer; the nayika adorns herself for the delight of the beloved; the housewife adorns the threshold of her home to sanctify it and seek divine blessings and even the truck driver adorns his vehicle with motifs of fortune and prosperity, such as the kalasha. Adornment is beautification but it is equally a statement of a world view where the beautiful is cherished as auspicious and a goal of life or purushartha.
The grammar of adornment not only includes images, motifs and metaphors, like the kalasha and Vishnupada, the swastika and the mango, the sun and the moon, but also includes the various colours, which evoke distinctive feelings. Robust, charged and evocative colours are an important part of our sense of beauty and colours therefore form an important part of the image of the nayika. Red is the colour of vermillion and denotes fertility and passion, the pangs of longing and the pleasure of belonging, and is a significant statement of the nayika’s feelings. Blue is the colour of the sky and the ocean and therefore of Vishnu, and the blue-black of the clouds of Ashada is the colour of Krishna, who is the prototypical romantic hero and to whom all love is directed. Yellow is the colour of mango blossoms and of young blossoming love and of the coy nayika becoming aware of her sensuality. Black is the colour of the night, of Kali and also of the abhisarika nayika as she boldly goes in search of her beloved, disregarding the ghosts and goblins, snakes and thunder that she encounters on the way. Saffron is the colour of the earth but also of ascetics and of the detachment of the nayika when sringara has transformed itself into bhakti sringara. Thus, colour for us is not only decorative but is associated with feelings and emotions. It is a non-verbal language; in its silent hues there are evocations and suggestions, which lead the sensitive rasika to realms far beyond words. The miniature artist uses these colours not only in the depiction of the nayika and her clothes but also in providing backgrounds to her environment. It is these backgrounds that provide clues to the moods of the nayika.
Parul may not have known this intellectually but she understood it intuitively.
The mirror spoke to her as a sakhi would speak to a nayika; it was a silent witness to her many moods, her moments of trembling expectation or waves of dark pathos. It was the mirror that created a duality between her and her mirror image; it was that image that gave to her the confirmation of her love, and assured her that if she was indeed beautiful, romantic moments would follow. It was the mirror that converted her individuality into a universality; when she was in front of the mirror, she was no longer alone but in her own reflection she saw her real and larger self. She saw in her all nayikas or women in love; it was her reflection that made her complete, like the pratibimba that completes the bimba or Parvati completes Shiva. The reflection in the mirror, when she was adorning herself, was not that of her, but that of an ardhanari, for in her mirror image there was not only the image of her face but a reflection of her mind, her hopes and aspirations for romantic moments; in that mirror, amorous delights were written in every wrinkle and line on that face and in whose expectation her eyes would seek him. Parul looked upon the mirror as a friend; she would talk to it, question it and even admonish it when she felt that she did not look just right.
Today was a special day as Praful was to come and stay with her for the entire weekend, and it was very important that she looked picture-perfect, for, according to her, perfect love could only arise from the perfection of beauty, and that perfection of love for her could not be separated from perfect sensual beauty. She could not separate her mind from her body. She looked at herself one more time and ran down into the garden and stood by the parijataka tree waiting for Parul.
The parijataka was for her a shrine of longing, of bhakti, of the anticipation and excitement of love. The wait for Praful made her anxious and agitated; she went to the patio where she had left her knitting bag, took out a ball of thread and wound this around the trunk of the parijataka tree. As she did this, she thought of the many women who worship the pipal tree to ask for a boon; her wish today was that Praful would find her attractive and desirable, find her not just a sundari but a kamini, and that they would have a romantic time together.
Her wish was readily fulfilled as soon thereafter Praful appeared, dressed in a blue kurta with a jhola hanging over his left shoulder. He gave her a warm embrace and, as their eyes met, it was as if Dushyanta was meeting Shakuntala in the ashram, and he picked up a parijataka flower and gave it to her.
Praful sat by her side, gazing at her and admiring her, and like a new bride she would catch a glimpse of him from time to time from the corner of her eyes. She would look more at him than at her own self; for in many ways, she realized and reached her own self through him; she defined herself through his approval, like the somnolent Shiva who found his real self through the sensuousness of Parvati. Romantic moments were important to her and there was nothing more important for her than to see herself reflected in his eyes. Every time she looked into his eyes, she realized why rivers flowed into the ocean. This was a rite of her love and this was for her a confirmation of her own being, for Parul lived more for her love than for her own self. Her very being had arpana or offering at its very core. Just as a darpana would return everything it received, Parul found a joy and beauty in giving everything she had, even her own self, to someone she loved and adored. For her, her own beauty was an offering, an ahuti, in the larger fire of love; she believed that the perfection of beauty is when it is given away.
‘You look like a madanika or a surasundari from our ancient temples this morning,’ he said, as he held her hand and they walked towards the patio under the champa tree. If the parijataka was the shrine of her romantic longing, the champa was a temple for the pleasures of their love. On this champa tree, there was a bird feeder and chiming bells, both of which produced pleasing sounds through the day and night, sounds that would keep company with Praful and sing to her in ragas of love.
‘But did these surasundaris love someone or were they just beautiful women as sculptures on a temple wall?’ she asked innocently.
‘How is that important?’
‘Yes, it is. For me, adornment and beauty is an offering to one’s beloved. Without that feeling of offering or bhakti, mere adornment is just vanity.’
Praful would find Parul’s simple but home-grown philosophy disarmingly refreshing. He was, after all, a professor of Philosophy and would often tell her about the traditional sixteen adornments of women and the classical Indian tradition of nakhashika varnan, or the way our classical poets described a woman’s beauty from head to toe.
‘Even Adi Shankara wrote a poem describing Parvati’s beauty from head to toe. Someday, I will write a poem about you.’
‘Why, am I a goddess that you should write about me?’
‘Yes, you are indeed a goddess of love; to me, you are my very own Parul. I saw the lovely rangoli you have done this morning and admired the red bindu in it. Why can’t the bindi on your forehead be red like that red bindu in the rangoli?’
Parul responded by turning her face away from him, thus letting Praful know with a gesture that he had asked an inappropriate question. She could convey much with a silent gesture and silence him with a few words. Her silence was often more eloquent and sharper than words. But even if it was not the right question at the right time, it still haunted Praful all day. What would make her bindi red? There was something very important, very primal about a red bindi for Praful. He would be moved by the very special red hue of kumkum. It was no ordinary red; the red of kumkum was the colour of fertility; it was a sign of purnatva or fullness, of man’s affirmation of the ultimate; it was the colour of the rising sun, of the red flowers devi devotees used for their worship, of the colour of havelis in romantic Rajasthani paintings; it was the colour of life and growth, of joy and abandon, of Holi, of perfection and of mangalya or auspiciousness. He would often dream about a red bindi on her forehead and kumkum in the parting of her hair, which were the traditional marks of a married Indian woman. And as he thought of this, his mind wandered through the ancient texts and he tried to reconstruct the aesthetics of the colour red in the Indian tradition. Somehow he did not remember any Vedic hymns that would celebrate the colour red, but then in Rajput miniature paintings, red is the colour of romance and passion and also of fertility and fecundity. He would ponder over these and other issues and his mind would work on such conundrums even when he was with Parul. He had a restless mind and although he would tire of it sometimes, but yet he thrived on it, even if it meant that those around him would not understand why his mood had changed suddenly. Parul was very perceptive of his mood changes and would often worry when he was in a pensive mood; she would take it personally and feel that she had lost him. For Parul, there could be no greater punishment than losing Praful, even momentarily, of losing his interest and attention in her. For her, the sun of romantic love should always shine and never be eclipsed. She thought of shadows as bad omens, as signs of impending gloom and darkness. Praful, on the other hand, was given to momentary distractions. Even in his office, he kept old greeting cards and scraps of paper, on which he would have scribbled something, the photograph of a friend pinned on the bulletin board, a photocopied miniature painting, a book of Tagore poems; when his mind was tired or he felt disconnected with this world, he would go to these little treasures and he would feel refreshed.
Parul had come down to the kitchen and was preparing the puja platter. She ran outside to pick a few flowers from her garden, making sure that there were some red flowers, lit the incense and lighted the diya in her little shrine in the kitchen. She would always cover her head and stand on Praful’s left. In the puja platter, there was a small box with kumkum and Praful opened it and dipped his finger into it and was about to apply a bindi to her head. She turned her head away from him as if to say ‘Not yet,’ and he held her as if to ask ‘Why not?’
‘Why not?’ he asked.
‘No, a red bindi is for everlasting and perfect love,’ Parul said with a trembling voice.
‘Isn’t our love perfect and everlasting? Don’t I love you?’
‘Yes, you do. But everlasting love should be without any viraha; there should be no break, no distance, and no questions. That is the perfection of love.’
Praful was speechless. All he could do was to hold her in a tight embrace and touch her feet.
‘You have such lovely feet.’
‘You know that I do not like it when you touch my feet.’
‘It is my way of saying that I love you and respect you.’ He took a flower from the puja platter and put it in her hair.
‘Parul, do you know that flowers look best in two places? At the feet of God and on the hair of a beautiful woman like you.’
Parul just turned around and smiled.
Just then, there was the sound of birds from the kitchen window and Parul ran out into the garden looking for them.
‘Oh, my poor little darlings, I forgot to leave seeds for you,’ and she filled the bird feeder that was hanging from the tree with seeds, and the birds settled down to their morning repast and seeing them pleased Parul.
